Series seven: Episode one

The productivity obsession

episode details

EPISODE 1

The productivity obsession

How will we all keep busy when we only have to work 15 hours a week? That was the question that actually worried the economist John Maynard Keynes when he wrote his short essay Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren in 1930. Over the next century, he predicted, the economy would become so productive that people would barely need to work at all. So what happened? Why are we so obsessed with productivity today?